Broadway producers of To Kill a Mockingbird countersue Harper Lee's estate
New suit claims Aaron Sorkin adaptation may have to be scrapped over alleged differences between the play and novel, as producers offer to stage disputed work at federal court
In a courtroom drama worthy of the novel itself, producers of the first Broadway adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are suing the author’s estate. They are offering to perform the play for a judge to prove it is faithful to the book after the estate claimed otherwise.
Hollywood producer Scott Rudin’s company Rudinplay filed a $10m (£6.98m) countersuit on 16 April, a month after Lee’s estate filed legal action to stop the production. The estate’s suit claimed that Oscar-winning writer Aaron Sorkin’s script deviated too much from the 1960 novel about race relations in the US south.
